The Detection Collection

‘Aylesbury?’ Henry could not stop himself breaking in. ‘That’s where my Alice was born and brought up.’

‘So she was, so she was. Found that on the old Net. Births, marriages and deaths. Poked around some more. And bingo.’

Henry sat without making any comment. Dim thoughts were rolling now in the deepest recesses of his mind. Dim, dark thoughts.

‘Right, The Sixth,’ Tom Pepper went on. ‘Name those school kids gave themselves – all in the sixth form, Aylesbury Grammar – when they began with their guitars and that. Then they got themselves a manager and the act took off. Suppose the boys looked nice and cuddly, and in no time they’d got fans galore and pots of money. Till all of a sudden the manager quit, and they folded.’

‘But how …?’ Henry ventured, as much as anything to fight down those dim, dark, whirling fog masses. ‘Why does all this have anything to do with that toothbrush there?’

‘Ask the Net. And what d’you find? The Sixth Make Their Come-back. Harrow Town Hall. Three Tuesdays back.’

The dark rolling clouds seemed suddenly to solidify in Henry’s head.

‘But that was when I went up to Bedford,’ he said.

‘So it was. Funny thing that, ain’t it? Think you told me when you spoke to your little Alice at breakfast next morning, trying to see if she knew anything about this toothbrush here, she let you believe she’d done nothing out of the ordinary that day. But you know what my old friend the Net said? Ticket was bought for that concert in the name of Alice Tailor.’

Henry heard in his head, clearly as clearly, Old Five Wives’ voice saying, Touch of the wandering-eye syndrome. It goes either way, you know.

Tom Pepper broke in. ‘Now what did I tell you? Just exactly what? Only one ticket for that concert, not two. So, don’t you get to thinking more than the evidence warrants.’

‘But if— If she isn’t— Wasn’t— If … No, you’re trying to make me believe she— No, right, I’m calling all this off. I no longer require your services. How— How much do I owe you?’

‘Oh, forget that. What’s an hour or two on the Internet?’

‘Then give me back that toothbrush, and— And— And—’

‘Okay. Yours after all. Found in your house. In that mug. Yours, if it isn’t someone else’s.’

Snatching the gleaming white object, Henry turned for the door.

‘No,’ Tom Pepper said. ‘No, can’t let you go like that.’

He looked about him as if for help, even giving a glance to the glowing but blank screen beside him.

Henry had his hand on the door-knob. Once again it was clammy with sudden sweat. He twisted and slid and twisted again.

‘Look,’ Tom Pepper said, ‘you’re afloat on a dangerous sea, my lad. You’ve no idea how dangerous. Believe this all-alive-o Tom Pepper right in front of you, he’s not lying.’

Henry got the door open.

He saw that in his left hand he was still clutching the white toothbrush, The Aristocrat. It seemed to be – if this could be so – glowing with evil alien energy.

He turned and ran down the narrow stairs, out into bustling Queensway, faintly hearing Tom Pepper still calling, ‘Oh, come back, come back. There’s more.’

At home, alien toothbrush eventually shoved into inner pocket, Henry was greeted by Alice, demure in pale yellow cardigan.

‘Darling, that’s nice. I thought you wouldn’t be back for ages.’

Again Henry heard Old Five Wives’ neighing voice. It goes either way, you know.

The wandering-eye syndrome.

And then, though he had vowed and vowed that he never would, he yanked the alien toothbrush from his pocket and thrust it under Alice’s pretty, upturned nose.

‘Tell me what this is,’ he shouted. ‘Tell me how it got to be in our toothmug, in our bathroom.’

The colour left Alice’s cheeks, as if it had never been there.

‘In our bathroom?’ she said, voice barely audible. ‘You found it there?’

‘I did. And I strongly suspect you knew it was there all the time.’

‘No.’ She swallowed fiercely. ‘Darling, I never had any idea it was there. He— He must have … While I was at the concert, The Sixth’s come-back one. He must have come over from America for that. He was their manager originally. So it must have been him who put that ticket through the letter-box. I thought it was one of the girls at work. I told them once my schoolgirl dream about The Sixth.’

‘But you went? Went to that concert?’ he said, almost snarled.

‘Well, yes, I did. I did. You were up in Bedford, and I thought suddenly I’d like to see them, see if they were the same. And they weren’t. They were awful. But while I was out of the house he must have … But how did he know that I lived …? No, he must have just seen me in the street. Perhaps on Saturday, the big shop.’

She came to a choked halt. Then, trembling, she began again.

‘Oh, Henry, I never could tell you about – about – about the terrible thing he did to me, when I’d only just finished school. That summer. Why he suddenly had to leave for America.’

Henry found then that his anger and his suspicions had gone. Alice’s utter distress had swept them away. A swirl of dust before a blast of clean wind.

‘No, darling,’ he said. ‘You didn’t tell—’

Then he realised that behind him the telephone had been ringing and ringing.

It could be Tom Pepper, he thought, though he could not have said why he felt it.

He snatched up the receiver.

‘Hello, hello?’

‘Well now, if that ain’t the hubby,’ said a treacly voice, strongly American-accented. ‘Okay, you can give little Alice a message. From Curtiss Boyer. Just say, I left my toothbrush while she was at the concert, and when you’re away on one of your Tuesday trips, Mr Hubby – I’ve researched you, old buddy – I’ll drop by and collect.’

Swindon was next on Henry’s Tuesday list. He left to go there, deciding he would not relay that message from Curtiss Boyer, even though Alice had told him how that summer long ago, in the absence from home of her parents, he had bullied her into letting him stay. But, having gone to the point of actually catching a Swindon train, in case he was being kept under observation, he got off as soon as he could – the train, unfortunately, was nonstop to Chippenham – and hurryingly returned.

At home he told Alice why he was there. Tearfully, she thanked him.

‘But – but if he comes, what are you going to do?’ she said. ‘You’d have to have a gun to stop that brute.’

‘I wouldn’t dare use a gun, even if I did have one. I wouldn’t actually properly know how.’

‘But then, darling …?’

‘No, we’ll just have to wait and see. He may not come, you know. He may have just wanted to scare you by leaving one of those toothbrushes of his.’